New SwiftKey X Alpha now available with improved punctuation

SwiftKey X has a new Alpha now available for download to VIP members. This release looks to address user concerns with punctuation in certain languages with French, Arabic, or Greek be some of the key focal points. As noted on their forums, users should be on the look out for the following changes:

Closing brackets: The space before } ] ) is removed and a space after the closing bracket is added. So if you write SwiftKey) by selecting SwiftKey as a prediction, the space between SwiftKey and ) is deleted and another space is inserted after the closing bracket.

Closing quotes: If you type "I like SwiftKey" by selecting SwiftKey as a prediction the space between SwiftKey and " is deleted and another space is inserted after the closing quote. This behaviour is adjusted for quotation marks used in other languages such as « », „ “, etc.

You can access the various quotation marks by long pressing the " key in the 123 panel of the keyboard.
French: There is now a space both before and after ! and ?

So if you write Bonjour ! by selecting Bonjour as a prediction, the space between Bonjour and ! remains and another space is inserted after the exclamation mark.

Notice that typing another ! gives you Bonjour !! (without a space between the two exclamation marks).

No space is added after : and ; to allow you to write smileys without having to delete this space.

Arabic: Arabic inverted comma, semicolon and question mark now behave like their English counterparts.

Greek: The Greek questionmark now behaves like its English counterpart.

Those changes aren't all that is involved with this release, there are a few others but those are the highlights. As always, if you're joined up for the Alpha testing make sure you offer feedback to the developers. Apps get better with feeback and that's what alpha testing is for.

Reader comments

New SwiftKey X Alpha now available with improved punctuation

I'd like to see them fix the addition of a space after selecting my login name from predictions (usually email address). I always have to backspace before moving on to the password section, otherwise whatever I'm logging into doesn't recognize it.

what none of these do is auto correct what i call spacebar mistakes with the m,n,b,v,c keys EG: goingmgold....'going gold' or makebmy....'make my'

ICS stock keyboard is the only one that does it pretty well. Also, I wish swiftkey would give you the option to get rid of the period key. I hit it by mistake instead of the spacebar too often to count.

I can't even get SwiftKey to remember my email addresses. It's annoying. The support forum doesn't help either. Under the question "how do you get SwiftKey to remember email addresses?" it basically says, "SwiftKey does it for you."

Here's the trick. After you've typed your email address don't hit space after ".com" instead choose the prediction button that represents what you typed. Now it's saved. This is how you teach SwiftKey words.

When I completed my email address nothing was shown in the three prediction boxes. Messing with the settings it ended up being I had selected "Spacebar will always put a space." After a change to "Spacebar always enters a prediction" now the issue is resolved.

Disegard my last post. lol Now anyone know how to stop the cursor jumping when you want to click between two words and it jumps 25 before that point? Might not be SwiftKey's issue.

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